British Military News, Technology & History

Royal Navy & Slavery Advert

This Royal Navy advert was produced in 2008 for a nationwide cinema release and was intended to celebrate the fact that the Royal Navy was one of the first military services in the developed world to first abolish the trade of slaves and then secondly to actively take part in combating the trade by patrolling the coast of Africa. This is a role it continues to undertake even today.

While the British government agreed to abolish slavery because of a public outcry at home the embargo was also used as a means of strangling the US economy which still relied heavily on slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. It was also used as a justification to tackle the French and to a lessor extent the Dutch both of whom had interests in Africa that conflicted with British ones.